


Shallow Graves

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-28
Updated: 2007-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The desert is full of ghosts never truly laid to rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shallow Graves

They found the first body in a ravine five miles from the slickrock track that served as a road. The skeleton was scattered along the wash, picked apart by scavengers and dragged by several summers' worth of flash floods; the skull was half-buried in the yellow sand a quarter-mile from the pelvis, and both femurs gleamed white and clean from the shadows beneath separate junipers.

"You think he got lost?" Sam's mouth was dry and there was dust on his tongue; they hadn't spoken since leaving the car. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice, irrationally worried about speaking too loud. "Or maybe he fell."

At the base of one gnarled juniper, Dean crouched on his heels and tugged a femur out of the sand. He looked at it for a moment, tracing over the coyote tooth marks as though they were words etched in the surface, then tossed it aside and stood up with a soft grunt.

"No way we'll be able to collect the whole thing to burn," Dean said. He wiped one hand across his sweaty forehead, leaving a streak of reddish dirt, and shaded his eyes as he looked upward. Ominous black clouds swallowed the sky above the horizon in the west, and the rest was brilliant blue around the blinding sun.

The park ranger had warned them about afternoon thunderstorms, chuckling at their disbelief in the hot, dry morning when there hadn't been a cloud in the sky. Sam had watched the storm roll in as they drove into the desert, half-listening to Dean bitch about the road and the complete lack of radio reception. He'd watched the clouds gather as they hiked across the rugged, landscape of canyons and stone, following crumbling cairns and the faintest sketch of an unimproved trail. Following nothing more than a rumor based on a guess, they hadn't known they were looking in the right place until they found the skeleton.

"No," Sam agreed. He slipped his backpack off his shoulder and unzipped it, took out a bottle of water and passed it to Dean. "It's too scattered."

If, he thought, it was even the right skeleton. There could be many lost bodies out here, nameless people who parked their cars and started walking and never came back. They could have stepped off the trail or twisted their ankles or ran out of water, crumpled on the stone and died in the silence.

Dean drank from the bottle, swallowing noisily; a drop of water trickled down his neck. "Sucks, 'cause I'd really like to burn the fucker," he said with a shrug, and Sam knew what he was going to say next, even before he went on. He wiped his mouth and passed the water back to Sam. "But I don't think he's the one we need to worry about."

Nodding, Sam agreed. "Yeah. Do you think--" He paused to take a sip and tried to guess the odds. Stumbling over one body was lucky enough, a million in one chance; three bodies was more than they could hope for. "Do you think they're somewhere close?"

Dean didn't answer right away. He turned around slowly, surveying the ravine and its steep, wind-polished slopes. Sam wondered if he looked as bedraggled as Dean: t-shirt stained with sweat and ringed with drying patches of salt, skin flushed and jeans dusted to match the colors of the desert.

"I don't know," Dean said, absentmindedly licking his chapped lips. He looked tired, Sam thought, too tired and too weary for this job, his shoulders hunched as though the bag he carried was too heavy. "If he made it this far -- he couldn't have carried them, not both of them, even if..."

Even if they were drugged. Even if they were already dead. Dean didn't finish the sentence, but Sam heard the words anyway. He looked up at the sky, black clouds encroaching on flawless blue, and down at the sand in the bottom of the ravine. A few steps away slender bones jutted from the ground in a tiny, haphazard cluster.

Five miles from the trailhead, five white ribs picked clean. He kicked a shower of sand over the bones; it was dry, giving easily, with no damp layer buried beneath the surface.

"Maybe he fell on his way back," Sam wondered aloud. The slopes of the wash were steep but not impassable, and there was no way of knowing where the man had gone, where he was returning from when he died.

"Or maybe the kids managed to hurt him before he killed them," Dean said.

"Not that it did them any good." The words came out more angrily than Sam intended, and when Dean glanced at him he looked away and started picking out possible routes along the burnt-yellow stone.

"Maybe--" Dean began.

Sam cut him off. "We won't know until we find them."

"So let's find them." Dean brushed by him and walked up the wash.

They found one of the man's hiking boots twenty yards away, cracked and faded from the sun with some bones of his foot still rattling inside. Beyond that they found a hatchet lodged between two boulders. The wooden handle was splintered and the blade was rusted, and when Dean jerked it loose and held it up in the sunlight.

"Blood," Sam said. It streaked the blade and stained the wood, the color of rust and the desert at sunset.

Dean replied, "Fucking bastard," and he tossed the hatchet aside.

It hit the stone with a clatter, and at the same moment a small cascade of rocks clattered toward them from the slope above. They both looked up, heads snapping like marionettes on a string, and they watched gravel and sand tumble toward them.

"Do you think--"

Footsteps scraped on the stone above them, and Sam fell silent. A second later, laughter echoed through the ravine, playfully rising and falling. There were no words, just high, childish giggles, and a fresh shower of sand rattled down the slope.

Dean sighed. "Well, I guess now we know they're close."

Sam turned and studied the slopes of the ravine carefully, but he saw nothing. "Up?"

"Goddammit," Dean answered, but he paused only to take a shotgun out of his bag before starting up the slope.

Sam was only a few steps behind him. He held onto the rock with one hand and leaned forward for balance, trying to look up at the top of the ravine and watch his step at the same time. In front of him, Dean's boot slipped on the rock, and Sam caught his calf to steady him. They climbed without speaking, and they heard no more laughter from the children above.

At the top they followed the ridge for a few hundred yards toward a high, pockmarked area spotted with squat trees, cacti and broken boulders. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Sam wondered if it was worse to be up high where they were exposed to lightning or in the ravine where it might flash-flood. The storm was moving fast, filling the sky with dark clouds and kicking up a hot, dry wind.

Dean stopped. "Sam, look."

The landscape was uneven and rugged, and it took Sam a few moments to see what Dean was pointing at: a low, elongated pile of stones up ahead.

"Yeah," Sam said. "I see it."

Dean started walking toward the pile of stones, and Sam followed him again. When they reached the makeshift grave, Dean knelt beside it, picking away the rocks and tossing them to the side noisily.

"I wonder why the coyotes didn't dig it up," Sam said, frowning thoughtfully.

As if in answer, childish laughter floated on the wind behind him, and he spun around just in time to see a faint shimmer, pale and small, quickly fading.

"Do you think--"

"They only go after adults with little kids," Dean said, but Sam noticed that he moved his shotgun a few inches closer. "Are you going to just stand there and watch or are you going to get your ass down here to help?"

"Right. Sorry."

Sam fell to his knees on the other side of the grave mound and began moving rocks away. His hand brushed against something soft and he jerked away from -- jeans, he realized, his heart racing. Blue jeans and small, white sneakers, a red t-shirt brittle as straw and starting to crumble away, and the rest -- the rest was dried and brown, desiccated by years in the desert and barely recognizable as skin and flesh anymore.

They were both there. Two boys, six and eight when they died, brothers whose parents had entrusted them to the wrong cousin as a babysitter one too many times. Two boys, marked down as "missing" in the officials reports, whose parents would never know what had happened. They were lying together in an ungainly heap, their mummified faces strangely ancient and alien. There was a small toy fire truck, plastic red and yellow still bright and clean, tucked between them.

"I'll tell you one good thing about the desert," Dean said; he poked one boy's arm experimentally. "They'll go up like kindling."

Sam suppressed a shudder, stood up quickly and turned away. When he looked back, Dean was watching him, his expression a mix of apology and annoyance. Sam ignored him and found Dean's bag, dug out the salt, lighter fluid and matches and handed them to Dean.

"Better hurry," he said. "Storm will be here soon."

He looked away again while Dean poured salt and accelerant over the bodies; the familiar chemical smell mingled with the scent of the junipers and the approaching thunderstorm. Sam heard Dean strike a match, and he heard the gentle _whoosh_ as the lighter fluid ignited.

Dean's hand on his arm startled him. "Come on."

They moved upwind, just beyond the reach of the shimmering heat, and watched the bodies burn. Behind them the storm rolled closer; Sam looked over his shoulder every few minutes. Sometimes he caught a flash of lightning from the corner of his eye, and he held his breath until the thunder sounded, counting to himself and adding the miles.

"I wonder why they didn't tell anyone," Dean said, after several minutes of silence. "Before, I mean, the guy must've... Somebody must've noticed."

"They were just little kids." It wasn't an answer or an explanation, and when Sam glanced at Dean he saw that Dean was looking at him rather than the fire. "Maybe they didn't -- I don't know. Maybe they didn't think anybody would believe them."

They said nothing more as the fire burned down. Wind from the approaching storm whipped sparks and ashes into the air, and when little was left but dying flames and embers, Dean picked up his bag and shotgun.

"Let's get out of here," he said.

They walked back the way they had come, along the ridge toward the ravine where the man had died. No echoing laughter followed them. Dean set a quick pace but the thunderstorm was faster; the rain started when they were hurrying along the bottom of the wash, their feet sinking in the sand and cold, fat raindrops forming tiny craters on the ground.

The faint trail climbed again on the other side of the wash, winding through massive boulders, and partway up Sam stopped and called out. "Dean, wait."

Dean turned. "Dude, in case you hadn't noticed--"

"Yeah, I know," Sam interrupted, "but we don't exactly want to get struck by lightning either."

"You're taller," Dean said charitably. "It'll hit you first."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Come on. It'll pass quickly." He gestured toward the base of one boulder, not exactly overhanging but steep enough to give the illusion of shelter. He felt stupid admitting that he wanted to watch the storm, so he only said, "Let's wait here for a while."

Dean raised an eyebrow and shrugged. "Whatever, weather-boy. But if I get bit in the ass by a rattlesnake, I'm making you suck the venom out."

Sam sunk to the ground and leaned against the boulder, drew his legs up and hooked his arms around his knees. "If you get bit in the ass by a rattlesnake, I'll read you your last rites, because there's no way I'm putting my mouth anywhere near your butt."

"Move over." Dean kicked his hip, and Sam slid over half an inch, pointedly ignoring Dean's exasperated sigh as he sat down. "You know," Dean said, holding out his hand to catch a few raindrops, "this isn't going to keep us dry."

"Don't worry," Sam said. "You're not made of sugar. You won't melt."

Dean was right; it didn't keep them dry. But it did help a little, cowering in the lee of a rock while the wind and rain whipped around. The day darkened, and across the desert broad, gray curtains of rain streaked down. The rain increased to a steady downpour that gathered in rivulets and streams on the ground. The thunder and lightning rolled closer, the space between flash and sound growing shorter until they were barely distinguishable. The lightning was blinding, crackling, close enough to raise the hair on Sam's neck. He automatically pulled his legs closer, thinking irrationally that he needed to be a smaller target, just in case the lightning got any ideas. Shoulders pressed together, neither one speaking, both he and Dean jumped when the deafening thunder ripped through the air and reverberated on the rocks around them, as though they were sitting inside a tremendous stone drum.

Then the echoing thunder faded, and as though it too had made its point, the rain began to slow.

"Cool," Dean breathed.

Sam smiled and shook his head.

It was still raining softly when they started walking again, but the clouds were moving away and the sun was coming out. Steam rose from the rocks under the brilliant rays, and the tiny trickles and pools of water vanished as quickly as they had formed.

They walked north and the storm raced to the east, a dark swarm above the desert, less threatening now that it had passed but no less impressive. Five miles back to the car, more or less, with wet jeans and wet shoes, and Sam trudged along behind Dean, watching the damp patches on his t-shirt dry and thinking about rain.

"Hey, Dean."

"Yeah?"

"You remember that summer we lived at that campground in Virginia?"

Dean didn't pause or turn around, but Sam saw him lift his head a bit. "Sure. God, that sucked. I don't think Dad ever set foot in a tent again after that."

"Yeah. Yeah, it -- it did."

Sam started to say more, but he stopped himself, swallowed the words instead. Leaking tent where there was never enough room, buzzing lights in the bathroom and the rumble of trucks on the highway, dinners of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at shaky picnic tables in the warm mist; he hadn't thought about that summer in years. It had been an in-between time for him, too young to go hunting with Dad and Dean, too old to be content staying behind. He remembered too many long, hot nights, lying on top of his sleeping bag and reading by the light of his flashlight, listening to crickets and frogs singing in the forest and waiting for the crunch of tires on gravel.

"There were those kids that lived there," Dean added after a moment. His voice was casual, and he was still walking without looking back, but Sam knew Dean well enough to know the difference between when he was just saying something and when he was _saying_ something.

Sam cleared his throat, hesitated just long enough to make it seem like he was struggling to remember. "Chrissy and Tyler."

"Yeah, that was them. Weird kids."

Sam felt a sting of annoyance, ridiculous after so many years, and he scowled. "They were my friends, Dean."

They were summer friends, safe friends, friends who never cared that his father didn't have a real job, that the only shoes he owned were his brother's cast-off sneakers with holes in the toes and he never wanted to talk about why his family was living in a tent all summer long. They had too many secrets of their own to bother looking for his. Chrissy with her blonde ponytail and skinny legs and solemn eyes, Ty with his too-big baseball cap and flannel shirt he never took off, even in the hottest part of the summer.

The storm was far enough away now that the thunder was only a distant rumble. Weather moves fast in the desert, the ranger had told them when they were asking for directions. You never know when it's going to change. Sam squinted and shaded his eyes, trying not to think about the sunburns both of them would have when the day was done, and his eyes off the trail for a few seconds was long enough for him to trip and stumble over a rock.

"Tie your shoes," Dean called back without turning.

"Bite me," Sam replied.

But the ranger hadn't been telling the truth, not all of it. Things changed, storms fired up and rain poured down, but minutes later it was over, and everything was the same again.

Chrissy and Tyler, he remembered, had a fort in the woods outside the campground. Through the chain-link fence and over the filthy trickle of water they called a stream, past the fallen tree rotting out on the inside, down into a thick patch of willows that was muddy when it rained. It was a kid place, a stupid fort Sam had thought he was too old for, but they took him to see it and made him promise not to tell, and he never let them know he thought it was dumb.

Ahead of him on the trail Dean stopped, and he held out his hand expectantly as he waited for Sam to catch up. Sam stared at it for a second before realizing that he wanted the water, then he handed it over without a word. Dean's face was getting red; he always burned and he always refused to admit it, and Sam thought about warning him right now that he didn't want to hear any bitching later.

But Dean drank half the water in a single gulp, swallowed loudly, and said, "Their dad -- remember him? Bastard was a mean drunk."

Sam took the water bottle back and stared at the droplets tracing down the plastic side. _You have to promise._ Written on notebook paper and signed in blood. Chrissy took her promises seriously.

"That's one way of putting it," he said.

"What's that mean?"

"Nothing." Sam shoved the water bottle into his bag without drinking and started walking, not waiting for Dean.

The trail disappeared on a broad expanse of rock, marked only by cairns in neat little stacks, and when Dean caught up to him he walked beside Sam for a several paces. "Yeah, that really sounds like a whole lot of nothing."

Sam sighed. "Dean, just -- just leave it."

Sometimes that was a little bit like asking a terrier to leave a rat alone, but Dean only nodded. "Sure. Whatever."

Sam glanced at him, relieved and grateful, and he didn't say anything when Dean picked up his pace and took the lead again.

_You have to promise._ And he always promised, every whisper so ordinary, every monster so mundane compared to things he was keeping from them.

They had left Virginia at the end of summer, heading west because Dad had heard a rumor about something in some town, it never mattered what. At a rest area in Indiana Dad asked him what was wrong, and Sam didn't say anything. _You have to promise,_ they had said. On a narrow highway in the rain, staring through the windshield at fields still too green for harvest, Dean kicked the back of his seat and asked if he was missing his girlfriend, and Sam didn't say anything. _Promise you won't tell anyone._ A thousand miles with a cold knot of guilt in his gut, a dozen times he almost spoke up, until finally they were far enough away that he convinced himself it didn't matter anymore.

"I could look them up," he said to himself.

He didn't realize he'd spoken loud enough for Dean to hear until Dean looked over his shoulder. "Who? Those old friends of yours?"

"Yeah." Sam waited but Dean didn't ask him why, so he added, "Just to see what happened to them."

"You could," Dean agreed, "after we get back to civilization. Unless you want to spend all night out here."

"Not tonight, thanks."

"Then hurry it up, slowpoke."

"Who're you calling a slowpoke?" Sam jogged several steps to pass Dean, then slowed down again and walking beside him. "Do you think they're gone? The ghosts, I mean."

"We salted and burned the bodies."

"Yeah, but..."

But this was the desert, and sometimes the rules were different here. The light was strong but the trails were faint, and they could walk miles without leaving a footprint that lasted. White bones and yellow rock, black clouds and blue sky, and so much space to be lost in.

"If they aren't," Dean said, "we'll come back."


End file.
